Friday, 29 February 2008

For a few days I’ve been reflecting on my experiences of church belonging. My sad observation is that far too often these are places that de-humanise… not overtly, and not all the time but somehow, in belonging, you become less human, less alive, and less free (why, for example, in church contexts I’ve belonged too are there so many women on anti-depressants). Masks become more important and more needful. You feel more at risk and therefore more vulnerable. You become less you and more what is expected of you. It becomes about conformity and not the kind of conforming (to Jesus) that the NT talks about.

As I’ve written elsewhere, you find yourself leaving more and more of who you are at the door as you enter. Your expectations become less. You shrivel up. Becoming an idealised ‘christian’ (whatever content that word is given in particular contexts) becomes more important than nurturing and resourcing a safe environment in which people slowly become more fully and wholly human in relation to God, themselves, and others.

A broad generalization I know, but nonetheless it’s an observation validated in my own experience.

“…Here’s my basic theology in a nutshell: [Dutch scholar] Hans Rookmaaker said Jesus didn't come to make us Christian, he came to make us fully human, and I think a full human being is a human being that is intellectually, spiritually, creatively, morally, and relationally alive, and the reason I think America is superficial both in its religion and its popular culture is I think we're intellectually, spiritually, creatively, morally, and relationally superficial, and we were made for something more. So the idea of discovering what it means to be fully human is, I think, what Jesus was about, more than simply are you a Christian or not, and when we think in terms of Christian and not Christian, then we start thinking of Christians as just another voting bloc or another purchasing power, instead of people who like every other human being want to experience a fully human life…”

Quote is from US author and commentator Dick Staub. Source, here. Thanks to Canadian extraordinaire Bill Kinnon (pictured in the shades, with Dick Staub). You might also find this interesting - a response to some questions I was asked on spiritual formation. It highlights, for me anyway, some of the emphases that need to be to the fore in church contexts.

Thursday, 28 February 2008

Paul writes – As I was reading from Maggi’s booklast advent(p.77. She was talking about Jesus not being recognised and drawing on an Elijah story) my mind drifted away to think about the (all-to-easy) human tendency to not seeing the quiet activity of God around us – the nearness of the Kingdom (cf. Lk 10:1-12). It’s too easy to miss it, to not notice it in either our/my haste (in part our/my need to be “productive”); or as the result of my/our own large dreams and plans for church, God, and mission.

Maggi talks about the “messianic expectation” (woven, for example, into John 1:6-8: 19-28). She writes: “what are you hoping for, waiting for, expecting, anticipating – it’s already here. But you can’t see it.” She says that the “already-but-not-yet of the kingdom is perfectly summed up” in the Johanine passage above. “The person they were hoping for was on their doorstep [think here of Luke 10: 8-9 and the way Eugene Peterson says something very similar]. Christ himself was living right there among them, yet they didn’t recognise him.”

Maggi helpfully wonders if, “Perhaps… the hope we invest in Jesus [or, for example, in “mission” revitalizing our church(s) and re-engaging us in the gospel and culture conversation] can take a shape in our minds that stops us from noticing” what’s right in front of our eyes; what’s already present.

The challenges are thus around seeing, listening, being touched by, tasting and smelling the activity of God-in-Christ Jesus in the present moment. It seems to me, as with (genuine) listening (not just hearing), that we’re asked “let go” of our own agenda’s and plans. To let go of the need to insert our /my own voice and story; to have on the ‘tip of our tongues’ the next thing we want to say – all of which hinders our ability to really listen and to really see.

Wednesday, 27 February 2008

Paul writes – I first came across Fr. Herbert McCabe last year (d. 2001. Obituary here. A good little article titled, Don't Talk Nonsense; Why Herbert McCabe Still Matters by L. Roger Owens is worth a read) as I prepared content for a workshop in male spirituality. I struck by his insistence on the importance of love. I’ve since come across McCabe often in footnotes, and then a little while ago, Alan Creech directed me to a little article by Fr. Alvin Kimel. The article engages with McCabe and has some simply beautiful quotes from two of McCabe’s books (God, Christ and Us & Faith Within Reason). You can read the whole reflection here. Otherwise, I simply leave you with the McCabe quotes to reflect on:

“…His love for us doesn’t depend on what we do or what we are like. He doesn’t care whether we are sinners or not. It makes no difference to him. He is just waiting to welcome us with joy and love. Sin doesn’t alter God’s attitude to us; it alters our attitude to him, so that we change him from the God who is simply love and nothing else, into this punitive ogre, this Satan. Sin matters enormously to us if we are sinners; it doesn’t matter at all to God. In a fairly literal sense he doesn’t give a damn about our sin. It is we who give the damns. We damn ourselves because we would rather justify ourselves, than be taken out of ourselves by the infinite love of God…”

“…God, of course, is not injured or insulted or threatened by our sin. So, when we speak of him forgiving, we are using the word “forgiving” in a rather stretched way, a rather far-fetched way. We speak of God forgiving not because he is really offended but accepts our apology or agrees to overlook the insult. What God is doing is like forgiveness not because of anything that happens in God, but because of what happens in us, because of the re-creative and redemptive side of forgiveness. All the insult and injury we do in sinning is to ourselves alone, not to God. We speak of God forgiving us because he comes to us to save us from ourselves, to restore us after we have injured ourselves, to redeem and re-create us…”

Kimel’s reflection is attached below as a PDF for ease of reading… The little section on the Prodigal Son (see top of p.2 of the PDF) is delightful.

Monday, 25 February 2008

Paul writes – I’m a little envious of Michael Spencer (a.k.a. Internet Monk). He’s recently sat under the tutelage of one of the most formative influences on my Jesus-following life – Eugene Peterson. Michael has shared some of his thoughts by way of a few notes that he has posted here, here, and here. As always, when people are reporting on Peterson by way of one of his lectures or workshops; I wanted more, but am grateful to Michael for what he has made available. Snippets about Peterson’s next two books (no sign yet on publishers website or Amazon pre-orders) has already whetted my appetite.

Both the fourth and final books (in his five book series) sounds as though they are drawn from lectures I heard, several years ago, from Regent College – Tell It Slant and Soulcraft

Here’s an excerpt:

“Learn to respect your congregation. People in the church are like those mysterious words in Hopkins’ poems. They have meaning, but you have to keep reading over and over.

Three things he wants to leave with us:

a.The Holiness of Congregation: Pay attention to what is there.

b.Story: Acquire a sense of narrative, where everything has its relation to everything else. The church keeps telling the story over and over.

Saturday, 23 February 2008

Paul writes – Another reflection “sparked” by Len Hjalmarson and resonances in my own life. Again too, I think it says something about “mission” being rooted in, and expressed out of, a deepening sense of inwardness (Godwardness)…both the inward and the outward need to be held in tension. Here's what Len wrote:

“…Belden Lane relates the story of Peter Matthiesson, who in the late sixties set out on a 250 mile trek across the Himalayas. The public object of the trip, along with biologist George Schaller, was to document the mating and migratory patterns of the Himalayan blue sheep. But the real goal, near to the heart of Peter Matthiesson, was to glimpse the rare and elusive snow leopard.

Reading the story it struck me that the public personal of ministers is to get things done. People will pay us to do work that is measurable, and to get results. But they won’t pay us to be on pilgrimage. They won’t pay us… and sometimes won’t even ask us… about the more important work we do. Yet it is the inner vocation that roots the outer, and we talk about sheep, when we long for a glimpse of something more elusive…”

Belden finishes his recounting of Peter Matthiessen's adventure with these words, words which I lightly underlined when I read a big section of this book in 1999:

"...The holy is seldom captured in the places where we seek it most. While we're preoccupied with Himalayan blue sheep, it slips onto the periphery of our vision in the furtive silhouette of a great cat." (The Solace of Fierce Landscapes p.80).

This is true too of trying to locate God in the ordinary and the everyday... almost when we're not looking, God quietly slips "onto the periphery of our vision". We have to be "present" (Mattiessen had to be in the Himalaya's if he wanted to find a snow leopard), but sometimes we try to hard to "see". Inward and outward work is necessary.

Thinking for a moment, eucharistically, and returning to my opening paragraph, we are gathered to the table, at the cost of Jesus’ suffering and sacrifice, to be fed. To be fed in order that we, being “filled with” God’s “life and goodness” are strengthened “to do [God’s] work”; and “to be [Christ’s] body in the world.” A missio-Dei-shaped spirituality holds in tension both this “inward” or gathered dimension, and the “outward” or sent dimension. Both are needful. Both are “mission”, if at the heart of mission lies the longing for God’s shalom.

Friday, 22 February 2008

Paul writes – My good friend, Canadian Len Hjalmarson has a written a good little piece on “organizing for mission”. He directs us to Missional Church edited by Darrell Guder. Here’s the excerpt Len features.

“…In such a missional community, leaders function on the continuum from centered to bounded set. In the centered set, the leaders need the skills that will enable them to welcome those who are outside moving in and to present those gathered in the congregation with the gifts and grace of the gospel that invite them to discipleship. These leaders need skills for reaching those who are nominal, the seekers, and the unchurched people. Their work will equip and support the congregation on its journey, however tentative and exploratory that may be. But what determines these skills and strategies for leadership is the larger image of the pilgrim people of God as a covenant community. The leaders primary skills are directed toward intentionally forming such orders within the community.

This can only happen as leaders themselves participate in such orders. Leaders must exert the greatest attention and energy at this point for a number of reasons. First, it is the covenant community that witnesses to the gospel as an alternative logic and narrative within the social context, including in particular the larger unbounded congregation. Second, this area is precisely where leaders have been given almost no preparation; there are few models from which they can learn. The leaders themselves must therefore become a novitiate, embark on a missional apprenticeship, in order to give the kind of direction needed by the emerging missional community. This is a demanding task that cannot be given a secondary role in the church…”

Roxburgh’s chapter has continued to journey with me. The theme of “covenant communities” and their formation has stuck with me since first reading this chapter in 1999. The question I continue to ask is: “is this type of covenant community actually possible and sustainable within the context of an ordinary local Anglican congregation without creating an “us and them” scenario in which those in the covenant community are seen as some kind of “super Christians” (‘Oh them, they’re the religious ones!)?”

Presently, in my own thinking, I think it is possible, particularly within new expressions of church (alt-worship, nu-monastic, emerging – or whatever other descriptor you want to use):

So, thinking further into the future, maybe one day the reality ofa suburban mendicant missional order (a “covenant community”) at the heart of a new and imaginative approach to being an anglican church differently might exist here in Cambridge.Maybe, like Peter Askew (Northumbria Community) a missional order might help form and shape us, and help us root and center ourselves within the community and the larger family (Anglican) of which we would want to be a part. And, maybe this suburban order will be entered on a year-by-year basis, i.e. each year there would be a renewal of ‘vows’ (i.e. shared kingdom (affirming and influencing) commitments – responses to grace).

Thursday, 21 February 2008

Alan writes - A friend sent me a copy of the following cartoon from Christianity Today. It sublimely raises a whole lot of questions about the maturation of faith and faith stages. I would be intrigued by people’s perception of it.

Sunday, 17 February 2008

Paul writes – In the foreground the stack of (nearly all) theology books I want to read or re-read over the course of this year… no doubt to be supplemented by books of the moment and new publications. Then… there’s a similar sized stack on spirituality…

I always start the year with good intentions, but I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself. I can only read what I can… some will still be in the stack in 2009.

Saturday, 16 February 2008

Paul writes – Over the course of this week I’ve listened to a fascinating interview with former “British Muslim Extremist” Ed Husain. “…Husain was seduced, at the age of 16, by revolutionary Islamist ideals that flourished at the heart of educated British culture. Yet he later shrank back from radicalism after coming close to a murder and watching people he loved become suicide bombers. He dug deeper into Islamic spirituality, and now offers a fresh and daring perspective on the way forward.” He is the author of Penguin published book, The Islamist:Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left.

You can download the podcast by right-clicking here, or visit the Speaking of Faith site for more information and other options. Ed is an articulate and thoughtful speaker with important things to say. This is a very helpful, and indeed, insightful interview. Well worth listening too and taking some time to reflect on.